Late-stage Jose Mourinho loves a good row
At the start of Jose Mourinho’s tenures with football clubs, he is the most jovial man in the world. He will hug the tea lady, cook dinner for the kit man and buy croissants for the media officers; he’s an all around good guy.
Fast forward to the latter stages of his tenures at football clubs and we get a different kind of Jose Mourinho. He will lambast the physiotherapist for doing her job, berate the fella that sells burgers outside the stadium for not putting enough relish on, and – as it turns out – get into an argument with the club’s in-house television station.
That last one is something which happened just on Tuesday during Mourinho’s press conference ahead of Manchester United’s home tie against Arsenal on Wednesday.
Mourinho – who is under a huge amount of pressure at Old Trafford due to an absolutely disastrous start to the season – was asked by MUTV whether he could give more detailed information about his team ahead of the game against Unai Emery’s side, to which he replied:
“I don’t want to update you, I would like Arsenal TV to ask the same questions but they don’t, they hide everything from the inside, so why should I answer to you.
“We are going to be in difficulty again to build the team. We are again going to have to make adaptations and compensations to try to give some balance to the team.
“But then I believe we are again going to have the spirit to fight and to try to win the match.”
Now, a cynic may well suggest that Mourinho didn’t respond to this question because he doesn’t know the answer, but of course we are not going to suggest that. Not for one second.